


coach roads i did ride

by wellsianwhimsy



Series: but i will remain [1]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Highwayman AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1405192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellsianwhimsy/pseuds/wellsianwhimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look for me by moonlight;<br/>Watch for me by moonlight;<br/>I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!</p>
            </blockquote>





	coach roads i did ride

**Author's Note:**

> Promise I'm still at work on The Other Bering Girl, I'm just waiting for season 5 before posting the next few chapters. So they'll start coming out again as of April 16.
> 
> Borrowing heavily from _The Highwayman_ by Alfred Noyes (1906). I claim no historical accuracy as the 1700s so aren't my period beyond the fashion. And England in general isn't really my area. Blame Noyes, not me.
> 
> As usual, unbetaed and just me... trying to learn how to write.

> _The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees._  
>  _The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas._  
>  _The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,_  
>  _And the highwayman came riding—_  
>  _Riding—riding—_  
>  _The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door._  
> 

Helena Wells was a romantic, it was up there with an quick mind, hot temper and loud mouth in her failings as a landlord’s daughter. She had done her very best to stamp it down, with three brothers she could not afford such weakness. Her excuse of foolish youth was years behind her, yet a mistake worthy of that left her tainted with a scar soon obvious to all. One that could have her marred for life, and never looked upon with the slightest respect again. She didn't require romance for a night, several, with the odd traveler who caught her eye. But they were never men she could have shared her life with. Even if she hadn't found her one by the time she discovered her ailment, she would not have sought out the man who seeded it. But she had found him, her one. The handsome stranger, eldest child of a senior trader in the Hudson Bay Company, Bering's son had long been banished from his father's sight. Sent to England - a land in which he had scarcely lived - with but fifty pounds to his name. 

It was this man that Helena had opened her heart to, those months back, and this young man that she in turn knew the secrets of.

Two more weeks. Just two before she could be free of this wretched existence under her father's roof. It was not that her father was a cruel man, but with her eldest brothers off seeking apprenticeship and marriage and her youngest using his clerical status in attempt to force a way into the intellectual circles, she found the inn - this whole damned town - suffocated her. It would only become worse when circumstances made themselves obvious. Two more weeks and her marriage (an institution designed to further bind her) would free her. Two more weeks, if only they were careful. She and her love, the world theirs.

But his work was dangerous and the authorities were ever closing in. Her highwayman's insistence on possessing that noble streak, thief and vagabond, perhaps, yet with a moral duty to those in dire impoverishment. His great flaw. Without it, they could have married and set sail for the colonies with the last ship. Before she knew of the burden she carried. Before he worried of its safety. They could not leave without the funds to set up their new life in a better world. No longer the landlord's daughter. And he need be no-one's son.

\- --- - 

It was dark - darker than the thin clouds warranted - and she wondered if it could just be her mood making it seem such. The red coats were closing in. Her mentor on the highways - a scoundrel in many ways, but honourable to his own code - had been captured six days since. She hadn't told Helena, she would only have worried. More stress could not be wise in her present condition. Myka didn’t know much of childbearing. She had been the third, and first surviving, female child born of her mother, but Warren had brought her up as his son, convinced his wife would never give him an heir. She had been taught to read and write, how to manage accounts and speak to important men as a respectful gentleman. How to handle gun and sword. It hadn’t exactly been a bad life, just cold and impersonal. And a lie. One that eventually broke. Yet she lacked any knowledge of how to behave as a proper woman, the child of a business owner, when she returned, so that lie had been made to continue, outside her little band of friends.

Arthur was more of the kind of father she imagined should exist than Warren had ever been. He had long since left the roads, acting instead as a trade master for their business. While often short, harsh in his words, he was a generous teacher and when he had eventually extended his trust to her their relationship was as warm as one could risk in their business. Not that he had not betrayed one of them. It wouldn’t have made a difference, either way he would have died, but stronger, younger men had broken, desperately seeking escape. Outlaws and brigands, footpads and highwaymen - a mix of the cruel, the desperate and the misguided - but they had their code, of sorts, and he had been true to the end.

She brought her horse up short next to the stone that marked his final resting place. The vicar who often sheltered their core group, Stephen, claimed his body from the gallows. Only a quick salute to her old friend could be spared before she spurred Trailer on against the wind. Beyond the woods and moor came the inn at the head of town.

She was already late.

\- --- - 

The clouds weren't so thick that they obscured the bright moon, which cast a silvery glow on the well-trod path through the moor. Helena smiled as she spotted her caller through the crack of the window's doors, hooves echoed across the land and soon enough her love was by the yard.

Hair, those wild curls, were tied back firmly at the nape and tucked away under a simple tricone. Bunched lace at the chin and the handsome coat of claret velvet disguised the swell of chest that betrayed Bering's son as no gentleman. There was little vulgarity, just a quiet dignity, to this highwayman's attire. Plain but well-kept pistols visible at each hip. The only dash of true finery was the rapier that had belonged to her father and his before him. Myka Bering's first theft before she left the land of her birth.

It should, after all, have been her inheritance.

She made no particular effort at being quiet. Her horse would have been heard miles back to any man that cared for a traveller in the dark. The inn was locked up - _sensible, you never knew what rogues crept by in the dead of night to thieve_ , she smiled to herself - but urging Trai on a few more steps she whistled up to the window behind which she knew the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black eyed daughter, sat in impatient wait.

\- --- - 

With eyes only for each other, neither lover noticed in the dark old inn-yard a stable wicket creak. There Walt, the ostler, listened carefully, his eyes tracking each movement before him. Walt had known the landlord's daughter all his years and grew obsessively attached to her. Since her brothers - forever heckling and jeering at him - had left, he had only worsened.

The woman under the window - for woman he knew her to be, he had watched them that night and saw the brigand seek the corruption of his dearest love - called up, "One kiss, before I go? It's good work tonight, Helena - our ticket across the water, I swear it. I'll be back by sunrise."

Helena spoke words he could not hear, but the heathen woman's laughter rung out across the yard, her next words though, were calming, low and with a weight the stableman could not grasp. Silver-tongued fiend, "If they do pick up my trail, then look for me by moonlight. I'll return to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

She raised herself on the stirrups, reaching up for the inn-daughter's hand but meeting instead the black waves of her hair glancing in the moonlight as she leant from the window. She caught the highwayman's hand, which had become distracted by the soft locks, and pressed an apple – as she offered each night - into her palm. The thief spoke not a word as she accepted the gift, slipping it into her side saddle, before grasping reins once more and disappearing to the west.

Walt crept from his hiding place as Helena turned from the window, pulling on his hat before setting off to town.

\- --- - 

Helena knew, knew that they closed in on Myka and all of her ilk in these parts. She had heard of the trader, the old highwayman's hanging, across the river. She knew him to be Myka's teacher and knew the woman deliberately kept her in the dark. And so it did not surprise her when dawn passed and her highwayman did not come, but as the day dragged on - chores attended, guest welcomed, writing practised - she became increasingly concerned. Noon came and Walt was in an unusually good mood when she came to fetch her father's horse for an afternoon ride. The man was so sullen normally it might have pulled a jest from her if her mind hadn't been so preoccupied on Myka's delay.

There was no jesting as the sun set and she heard calls from the dining area that a red coat troop approached, marching by the path Myka had gone. Her heart near stopped as they came to the old inn door, but no highwayman was among them. Her Myka had escaped them and they came here to...

Of course that's why they came. She met Walter's eye across the yard. Of course.

They said no word to the landlord, striking him to the floor as he made to give them welcome and taking his ale without payment, declaring it as worthless as his scoundrel guests. Helena could fight, Charles and she brawled together into their late years, but against the five trained men who gagged and bound her, she stood no chance. Two men knelt by her window, muskets ready as another pair strung her to her bed, in clear view of the window. She could hear men entering the other rooms, resting their own muskets against the window frame.

Death at every window.

She could see from where she was bound that ribbon, that well-worn road, down which her Myka always rode.

The men, those o so honourable men, had tied her upright arms bound at front, with many a lewd jest. One man sacrificed his musket which had been bound too, the muzzle pressing beneath her breast.

"Now, keep good watch!" he cried, as his fellows in mock gentlemanly fashion kissed her hands and face. Unable to respond, she cast her mind to her love, but all that echoed were those last words the doomed one spoke.

_Look for me by moonlight;_  
 _Watch for me by moonlight;_  
 _I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!_

She struggled against the knots that held her. Twisting, shrugging, relaxing, anything she could think of that might free her, but all held strong and tight. In frustration, ignoring the amusement she caused to those that watched her, she writhed and fought against the bonds until her hands ached. She no longer struggled pointlessly however, a plan forming in her mind. Her singular focus on Myka, on warning her, on saving her, without notice of the cost. She pulled and strained until every muscle ached from the effort and her skin was rubbed raw at the rope. But! at the stroke of midnight the tip of a single finger caught it.

_The trigger, at least, was hers._

With that, she stopped, her body stiffened to the attention they had forced her to. The tip of one finger touched it, she would strive no more for the rest. She could not risk their ire, she would not jeopardise this one chance. Her breaths eventually slowed, as fight left her and resolve strengthened. The muzzle still pressed beneath her breast. 

She stared out at the road. She stared down the path of Erebus, and in the distance, heard that familiar canter. Trailer. Her eyes wavered only for a second to the men crouched by the opening. They hadn’t reacted at all, no guns ready. They had long since fallen into an uneasy silence and weary from the day’s marching and the drinking, they seemed deaf to their quarry. But over the path, came the unmistakable form of her highwayman.

The redcoats finally paid heed to the noise, suddenly starting to their muskets  – hammer pulled back to half-cock, and powder tipped into the pan – she heard another scuffle in the room next door. Someone had dropped his weapon in preparing it. Hers needed no such treatment.

She drew herself up straight, eyes fixed on the fast approaching form. Behind the reek of sweat and blood that dominated the air, the apples in the bowl by her bed gave off a sweet scent, and she smiled sadly as she drew one last deep breath.

Her finger moved in the moonlight, setting free the bullet to tear through her chest, her head bowed as death took her.

\- --- - 

Gunfire shattered the still of the night and Myka brought Trai round, pausing as she attempted to locate its direction. A line of soldiers suddeny appeared from the barn lying just ahead of the inn and a spray of bullets, each falling short, seemed to answer her. She cursed, breaking the previous night's promise to keep an earlier, less frivilous oath as she spurred to the west, riding hard away from the shots. She overshot the vicarage, not wanting to lead any further soldiers to her friends.

It was past dawn before she made it back to town. She had stopped to allow Trai some rest as she paced feverishly for hours, guilty at her flight. However, rationality won out, knowing Helena would rather her alive than keeping some grandiose promise. 

Stephen’s face was ashen as he emerged from the vicarage at the edge of the town to greet her. “Myka, thank the Lord.”

Claudia, their favourite young footpad, stepped out behind him, she looked as though she had been sick, or crying, possibly both. “I don’t think the Lord had much to do with it.”

Claudia made a face, torn between relief and anguish before throwing herself against Myka. The highwayman looked up from the form attached to her side, “You heard about the inn?”

“I saw the red coats marching yesterday morning. I tried to get word to you,” Stephen frowned at how collected his friend seemed. “I should have ridden to the inn myself, I could have beaten them there. I could have stopped it.”

The man, usually so calm, was filled with an anger Myka had never seen. Artie had spoken of the murder of the man’s sister. Of how his father had allowed the man – a noble – to walk free. Of Steve’s rage and the beginning of his involvement in their ‘little band of merry men’. “I’m fine. And you are not to blame for _anything_. Don't go there, vicar.”

He grimaced, “I could have saved her. Someone at the inn must have seen you, connected the dots… I could have beaten them there, Myka. I am-”

Confusion broke through the fatigue that had dominated Myka’s expression since she reached their sanctuary. Her voice broke as she asked, “Saved who?”

Claudia finally let go, stepping back with a horrified look, “You…”

“Myka, I spoke to a trader who left the inn a few hours ago. He came to ask the Lord's aid before he moved on and...” Stephen delayed, biting at his lip, before clutching Myka’s shoulder. “He said the landlord’s daughter had been taken and bound in one of the rooms. That they forced a musket to her chest. He said... he said that the first shot which alerted the highwayman was her shot.

“Helena sacrificed herself, Myka, to warn you.”

Myka’s face grew grey. It was a thought that hadn't occurred to her. The soldiers had been ahead of the inn... that her relationship with the inn had been betrayed never even occurred to her. That one could harm a woman bearing child was unthinkable. That Helena had done it herself was... Stephen’s fingers curled painfully into her shoulder, his whole body tense, unsure.

Suddenly, she ripped herself from his grasp, swiftly pulling herself back into the saddle and turning back to the inn with a cry that could have been prayer or curse. Her two friends were left staring in anguish after the grief-stricken woman. The vicar pulled Claudia in with one arm and held her close, “I question the Lord's judgement once more."

He released his friend and grabbed two poles stacked against the wall before motioning at the house, gently authoritive, "Claudia, I need to to fetch me the cloth we used for Artie." Claudia choked back what she had been on the verge of asking, his words answering her without platitude.

\- --- - 

It was almost an hour before they reached the moor. The soldiers, thankfully, had left the body alone. Horse and mistress shot down like dogs on the highway. 

The ever neat white lace at her throat stained with red.

>   
>  _And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,_   
>  _When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas._   
>  _The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,_   
>  _A highwayman comes riding—_   
>  _Riding—riding—_   
>  _A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door._   
> 

**Author's Note:**

> I reckoned it’s not implausible that Helena, pre-Christina’s birth, did not actually want the child, but Myka would be protective of both no matter what. However, Helena sacrificing both herself and the unborn child didn't even occur to her until Steve informs her. Which makes the thoroughly irrational dive into death on Myka’s part make sense to me.
> 
> Pete was also in the original draft, but he was lost. I had him as a cousin of Myka who knew her secret, it was to him they were going to travel when they were able to leave Britain.


End file.
